Disaster Cuban power grid collapses for fourth time as hurricane nears - Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time.

Residents pass the time during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024.
Ramon Espinosa/AP

Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time.

The Cuban Electrical Union said about 16% of the country had had power restored when the aging energy grid again overloaded late Saturday, and according to the local state-run power company more than 216,000 people in the capital of Havana, a city of two million, had power restored Sunday afternoon.

However, later Sunday afternoon, the power grid collapsed again, for the fourth time since Friday.

At a news conference on Sunday, Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said 52,000 power workers were trying to restore service but the arrival of Hurricane Oscar in eastern Cuba would likely hamper their efforts.

Hurricane Oscar made its first landfall on Inagua Island in The Bahamas, with maximum estimated sustained winds of 80 mph, according to the 5 a.m. EDT update from the National Hurricane Center on Sunday.

It is forecast to reach the northeastern coast of Cuba as a hurricane later this afternoon. “Weakening is expected after landfall, but Oscar could still be a tropical storm when it moves north of Cuba late Monday and moves across the central Bahamas on Tuesday,” NHC said.

Cuba’s first island-wide blackout happened on Friday, when one of the country’s major power plants failed, according to the energy ministry. Most people in the 10 million-strong country have had their access to power interrupted since then.

Hours after officials said power was being slowly restored, the country suffered a second nationwide blackout on Saturday morning.

The blackouts threaten to plunge the communist-run nation into a deeper crisis. Water supply and keeping food fresh are both dependent on reliable power.

Havana residents queue for bread​

Some people began flooding WhatsApp chats with updates on which areas had power, while others arranged to store medications in the fridges of those who briefly had power – or were lucky enough to have a generator.

In Havana, residents waited for hours to buy a few loaves from the handful of locations selling bread in the capital. When the bread sold out, several people argued angrily that they had been skipped in line.

Many wondered aloud where Cuba’s traditional allies were, such as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico. Until now, they had been supplying the island with badly needed barrels of oil to keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, tourists were still seen circling Havana’s main avenues in classic 1950s cars, although many hotel generators had run out of fuel.

One foreign visitor told CNN that Havana’s José Martí International Airport was operating in the dark on emergency power only, adding that printers did not work to issue tickets and there was no air conditioning in the terminal.

Reuters reporters witnessed two small protests overnight into Sunday, while videos of protests elsewhere in the capital have also surfaced.

The Cuban government is cancelling classes for students from Monday until Wednesday, having previously cancelled them on Friday. It has also instructed non-essential workers to stay home. The US embassy in Havana will be open only for emergency services on Monday.

Cuban officials have blamed the energy crisis on a confluence of events, from increased US economic sanctions to disruptions caused by recent hurricanes and the impoverished state of the island’s infrastructure.

In a televised address on Thursday that was delayed by technical difficulties, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said much of the country’s limited production was stopped to avoid leaving people completely without power.

“We have been paralyzing economic activity to generate (power) to the population,” he said.

The country’s health minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, said Friday on X that the country’s health facilities were running on generators and that health workers continued to provide vital services.

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[Feline Supremacist]

Leave it to an upper class new yorker to shit on foreigners living in poverty under a communist government. I don't know if that's what you're trying to get across but I hope it is. Arguing with you is always fun.

If anything you're shitting on Cubans, believing that in a nation with an electrical grid that's not working they'd protest for the benefit of Western journoscum and midwits who smugpost about their lives in a socialist nation, as if our own electrical grid is a shining example of free market capitalist technology, instead of coping with the emergency situation at hand. For one thing lack of refrigeration in a Caribbean island is a very real emergency. Hospitals are facing serious issues and people will die in Cuba, just like they have died in the US when our grid has gone down.

And no matter what your income level is in NYC we are all aware that not only is the grid in a constant state of repair, stray voltage kills animals and people on an ongoing basis. Spare us your outrage and stay in your lane, kid.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

I have a theory that most first-world cities are a "one week blackout" away from total chaos, since most people have no common sense, no survival knowledge, no water or food storage, and no emergency radios.

You could say that that's what happened to New Orleans back during Katrina, and it's honestly expected for society to break down when such a vital resource is scarce. In the before times, said reasource was (normally) water, now it is power